The Works Art + Design Festival: Don't miss the giant vagina

OK, so just to get this out of the way straight off — there’s a huge vagina on Churchill Square. If such a thing terrifies or otherwise threatens your well-being, do not panic, there are literally hundreds of other exhibitions to enjoy at the Works Art + Design Festival, running through its final days through Tuesday.

The tall, plush and penetrable vagina in question is called In and Out, designed by Kasie Campbell, and includes a performance aspect between 2 p.m. and 4 p.m., Saturday and Tuesday. The piece, according to its write-up in the handy-dandy Works guide, “deals with the anxieties and vulnerabilities that the artist experiences when they’ve become the object of someone else’s gaze. The large sculpture acts as a venue, revealing itself as a manifestation of their anxieties, deeming its own connotations of what is attractive/repulsive.

“Viewers,” it notes, “are encouraged to enter the space.” Oh — if I had a nickel.

In all seriousness, Campbell’s piece is one of the standouts in what feels like a more modest (overall), more performance-based Works fest.

There are no gigantic wood sculptures, campground of tents or even garden of potatoes this year — instead a whole lot of disparate and diverse molecules of art, spread far and wide, with a lot of specific-event performance, all completely free of charge. Thanks in part to piggybacking onto existing shows at galleries around and outside the downtown core, there’s really a lot of phenomenal work listed in the program this year, and I’d especially push you to Latitude 53 for the Ociciwan-curated Dayna Danger show, Big ’Uns, which, using hunting-magazine vernacular as a springboard, is a fascinating portrait series of Canadians, oiled-up and wearing nothing more than taxidermy horns.

As is traditional, I rode around to the nearly 30 sites and took in almost everything the fest has to offer. What follows is a tiny list of suggestions of works you might visit before the festival packs up for another year, having reminded us loudly, yes, there is a such thing as art in Edmonton. But we already knew that, right?

Typically, wild-eyed francophone photographer Patrick Ares-Pilon has found a way to turn an uninhabitable space into a cosy place for a nap. Couches and plush chairs are all aimed at the central slide show in his tent, photos of Expo 67 in Montreal reclaimed from his relatives. Friday night at 7 p.m., it’s BYOS — bring your own slides!

Maureen Benning’s If I Had a Hammer at the Alberta Craft Council at the Works Art + Design Festival.Fish Griwkowsky /
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Maureen Benning — If I Had a Hammer — Alberta Craft Council (10186 106 St.)

The hand-hooked, wool on linen piece celebrates women in trades working side by side with their male counterparts and is part of an amazing show called Women’s Hands Building a Nation down in the basement of the Alberta Craft Council. Various media commemorates the history of women in the province, including bra-burning and a beautiful embroidery of the birth control pill. Trump would not approve, check it out.

Tucked into one of the tents on the southwest corner of the square, Christensen continues her series of intrusions into rural life by the urban, in the past including keep-off-the-grass signs in wild spaces. This little book of blood-red drawings of buildings on winter nature photos is a perfect balance of sad and funny.

Marina Hulzenga’s Liminal Space/Awasitipahaskan at the Vignettes Building at the Works Art + Design Festival.Fish Griwkowsky /
Postmedia

The preceding Cree word means “across the borderline” and a circle of stones in the centre labelled “Driving on gravel makes me feel home” is circled by cut-outs of First Nations reserves around Alberta. There’s also an audio aspect with various recordings. It’s a contemplative space, but one which makes you move around it with curiosity.

Straight-up beautiful black and whites, these lightbox photos look at the conflict and contrast that come about because of marginalization in our city, looking through one to see the other, and in a way mirroring the way we all look away sometimes when something doesn’t fit into our world view. The Monument: Coding a Woodcut show is also at the gallery as a bonus, which is worth getting to by any means possible.

Juliana Rempel’s In Between at Matrix Hotel at the Works Art + Design Festival.Fish Griwkowsky /
Postmedia

Juliana Rempel — In Between — Matrix Hotel (10640 100 Ave.)

Upstairs in the hospitality suite, Rempel’s chalky handmade ceramic sculptures are both pretty and strangely funny — semi-realistic-looking objects which serve as decorations but feel like Lego mini-figurine accessories. Being based on food and drink, but with the inability to feed or quench in a caloric sense, they’re nonetheless pleasing. And hey, the bar’s right there, anyway!

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